U.S.S. Tor

[Retroneon]

Hi everybody! There's a lot of activity lately with people using arcs and rings as themes for ships. John Eaves is really pushing for ring saucers. Him and Doug Drexler like to post each other's artwork so much, I get the two confused! The ST Online contest produced ring necks. Really innovative ideas came about for maintaining the famous Enterprise silhouette, while adding in new shapes. I'm not familiar with all of those artists' names yet. Why don't you chime in?


Allow me to throw my hat into the ring. I wanted to see what could be done with drawing a ship composed of arcs and tori. Thus, the U.S.S. Tor. It's nothing more than a simple doodle. What do you think about the shapes?

It seems that the Enterprise-J (Jonathan Archer?) is now set as an evolution goal for everything in between E and J. So I'm not going to think too hard on whether or not a divergent design can be an Enterprise. It's just for fun.


The way I see it, any new advances in power and performance is largely dependant on plot. My idea is focused on layout. I picture it as the result of the experience gained when Starfleet operated DS9. If people here like the design, I'm thinking about possibly calling this ship a Rendez-Class.


So what we have is a saucer with impulse engines. Really basic. Too basic? Maybe it needs little nacelles blended on bottom protrusions, like the Defiant. I like the concept behind the Insignia-Class. Function pods can be docked on either flank of my saucer. The most extensive unit is a station arc. The crew no longer has to contend with guests barging in on the vital rooms of the ship. The crew's quarters are in the core saucer. The command saucer, and the gap around it are circles. The habitation ring is supposed to look like a hard boiled egg surrounding a yolk. Both the ring and core together are called the saucer.


I feel that the ring needs to split living quarters in two wings. When two antagonistic delegation parties are aboard, I'd sure like their staterooms to be as far apart as possible. The prow has the same volume as both wings combined. This is where people can convene, at the front of the ship. After Picard's recent adventure, perhaps it would be prudent to beef up the prow just a bit.


Like a parking lot, the shuttlebays are now large enough to accommodate the private craft of each guest at the same time. These bays are part of the battle section. It's to allow the section to serve as a carrier. Instead of tambour slats, the shuttlebay doors are rotating blisters. The habitation ring can be replaced by more door units.


I think the ship would still have a neck. It's the most direct route to the engineering section. The nacelle struts are only used to convey power, and provide access for maintenance. Yes people, if the Eiffel Tower can have an elevator in it's leg (funicular?), then a turbolift can travel in the struts. The roll bar holds the main sensor palette at a distance from the ship. Having it behind the saucer, presents a new opportunity. Any ship or artifact held in the dock, can be directly scanned and analyzed.


The dorsal surface of the engineering section is concave. A Franz Joseph cargo container can easily lay on top of it. Having a shuttlebay in the back would be too redundant. There needs to be something else in the round area there. Perhaps a really large industrial replicator pad can extend out the bottom. I can picture the ship hovering over an asteroid, dematerializing it for ore, and maybe even filling the raw material into the container. It works vice versa too. The engineering section is the ultimate truck bed.


The nacelles take the ring concept in a new direction. You can see the warp coils that comprise them. The Sovereign-Class has really long nacelles compared to its contemporaries. Perhaps it isn't that the ship has more coils, but that they have room to slide back and forth. I'd love to see a gimmick where they spring back like pinball plungers.


Another new gimmick is that the ship finally integrates experiments in catapult technology. It's to help push shuttles on their way, thereby conserving fuel.


Well, that's all I can think of for now. I'd love to hear your opinions. And feel free to use and add to this concept.

 

[Retroneon]

If the prows get damaged, the sections can entirely disengage.

 

[Retroneon]

If you had to ask, the bowling alley is in the promenade!

The crew deserves to have clearer situational awareness, and even feel like they're floating through space. I never understood how they could fly through three-dimensional space, but only look at it through a tiny forward-viewing display. The space shuttle has a more panoramic view!

I think the bridge module should have a new internal layout. There could be a bridge-dedicated stellar cartography room in front of the viewscreen. Why not then have the conference room in the front of everything else? With the viewscreen and conference screen off, the bridge crew can look at shared and more informative projections in the center. Or perhaps the bridge is built into a cartography room.

The walls and ceiling can display how things look outside. Maybe large screens embedded into the floor, allow the crew to see the view below the ship too.

There's always a fancy dome hanging from the ceiling. But it never does anything. It could be a holoprojector.

The concept drawings for bridges are usually quite grand. But of course they had to be simplified for set construction. Now, with CG, the sky's the limit. Anyway, you can barely even see the bridge module in my doodle. I'm just musing on what shape it may take.

 

[sojourner]

So, um, image?

 

[Retroneon]

Oh, are other people not able to see the image too? I can see it quite clearly.

Let me add the Postimage links then. Hopefully, one of these will work. It's just one image, but there are so many ways to post it!

http://s2.postimage.org/q97rmnwc8/USS_Tor.png

Direct Link
http://postimage.org/image/1fy7m0d44/

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[img=http://s2.postimage.org/1fy7m0d44/USS_Tor.jpg]

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<a href='http://postimage.org/image/1fy7m0d44/' target='_blank'><img src='http://s2.postimage.org/1fy7m0d44/USS_Tor.jpg' border='0' alt="USS Tor" /></a>

Hotlink for Forums (1)

image host

Hotlink for Forums (2)
[img=http://s2.postimage.org/q97rmnwh3/USS_Tor.png]
image host

Hotlink for Website
<a href='http://www.postimage.org/' target='_blank'><img src='http://s2.postimage.org/q97rmnwh3/USS_Tor.png' border='0' alt="USS Tor" /></a><br /><a target='_blank' href='http://www.postimage.org/'>image host</a><br /><br />

 

[sojourner]

Even if I quote your original post I don't see any image information, never mind an image.

interesting design. The ramming armor is a bit cheesy though. It's not like ramming is anywhere near a standard practice.

 

[Retroneon]

Just checked this page from my phone. I couldn't see the pic in the original post either. Because my computer uploaded the image, only it was able to view the picture. The problem all really had to do with finding the code this forum understands.

You are correct in that the terminology of "ramming" is inconsistent with Starfleet policy. The series is neither known for, nor would I promote beefed up warships operated by the good guys.

Ramming shouldn't be listed in callouts.

It just seemed that poor saucers get pelted and destroyed one too many times. The Kelvin flying into the maw of Nero's ship. Debris grazing the Nuprise. Torpedoes flying through Kirk's ship. Nearly getting crushed by the doors of Spacedock and the Dyson Sphere. Having rooms extracted by the Borg. Worf ordering the Defiant to ram into the Borg cube. Picard actually ramming into the Reman ship.

As a gesture of good faith, Starfleet seems reluctant to add even substantial defensive armor. They should at least put some where the ship takes hits very often. But if severe damage would just cascade down to the rest of the ship anyway, then a little bit of extra armor might not make much difference.

 

[sojourner]

Who says the ships mentioned don't already have armor? Maybe it's just called hull plating.

 

[Retroneon]

In the real world, armor is really just how thick you want the hull plating to be. This isn't feasible on light aircraft. But it's doable on boats. There's also reactive tank armor, which explodes on impact, causing a shell to detonate before it penetrates. I always thought ablative armor was something like that. It would also flake off in layers, revealing clean new surfaces.

For all intents and purposes, just a smooth and clean hull would suffice for TOS fans. By TMP, it looks like the hull is still smooth, but the multiple plates welded together, refract light differently.

Only the Klingons get the layered look on their ships. There's really good art to it too, with all those surface triangles. All of the recent Starfleet ships have sweeping curved seams between panels that alternate in various shades of grey. I assumed that this was ablative armor, and that the swoops are an attempt to integrate this armor in an elegant way.

Notched styrene panels are a staple of Star Wars ships, bad guy or hero.

I take it then, that your artistic recommendation is to go with minimal surface detailing?

 

[Avon]

lets ram the enemy with our fortified promenade!

 

[Retroneon]

lets ram the enemy with our fortified promenade!

Actually, yes! It's a last ditch maneuver, and not a common function. It would be wasteful to have the whole bow be nothing but metal and braces. Guests would probably prefer to have the convening areas in the front, like Ten Forward. Also, I think the promenade is the least vital aspect of the ship, compared to quarters and engine rooms. So if the promenade was properly evacuated, and gets destroyed, it's not a penalty to lives, housing, and resource allocation.

 

[Kaiser]

Nice Design there
​

 

[JES]

I kind of like the idea of a ramming bow. If it were actually feasible, it might just come in handy.

 

[Retroneon]

"Rendez-Class" comes from the word "rendezvous". It's a place where people go to meet.

The class has multiple configurations, with the forward ring, command saucer, and engineering hull being their own ships. I don't know if that means there should actually be three class names. Perhaps each name can fit together in multiple combinations. That'll take some really creative thought.

The core saucer has a very standard layout. It's intended for common duties with a limited range. So that's why it currently looks a bit like the Miranda-Class.

The engineering ship is focused on massive cargo hauling, construction, and repair. It's essentially a drydock with nacelles. If it's docked with a core saucer, then it's capable of performing like a cruiser. Without cargo in the large shuttlebays, the ship can serve as a carrier of smaller craft. But the fandom is conflicted on whether fighters have a place in the series.

I don't know whether to call the third ship a ring or an arc. It's like a cruise ship or convention center that can only orbit a planet. They can probably stack to make larger space stations. It would only dock with a core saucer, to be warped to other planets. There might be one defensive core saucer per stack or group. When docked with an engineering hull, you have a complete mobile station and drydock. There are two ways I can picture it working. The arc could land on top of the engineering hull's shuttlebays. Or it could land facing backwards onto the neck.

All three of these ship types dock together to form flagships. Long range exploration cruisers need to be capable of any task called upon them.

Thinking about what detail to add on the rear ring, I think the plasna vents and radiator panels will go on the outside. The inside will have light panels for shining on objects in the middle. Perhaps the lights can chase to indicate intensive scanning.

The promenade is just a large hall in the arc ship. From the outside, you can see that there are three sections to it. Internally, there are three floors. So you get a total of nine sections.

The internal layout of the arc ship will be the focus of my next post.

 

[Klaus]

Neat, I have a fondness for ring-mounted nacelles...

 

[Retroneon]

Thanks!

I've started to do top view drawings. The shapes have to be just right, so that all three ships can interchange.

There's always this band on the sides of saucers. They're supposed to be hardpoints for docking clamps. But we never see them used as such. I'm going to use them to dock my habitation ships together.

 

[Kaiser]

Looks nice so far

 

[Retroneon]

And here's a new drawing!



Once I draw the core ship, all three ships will be connected to make my original concept. The core hull will have a square or diamond theme. The habitat and engineering hulls both use similar arcs. The tan color denotes docking systems.

The little docking arms can fold back to let a bigger ship fly into the center. The "C" can position itself around the neck of Starfleet ships, and connect to the side airlocks.

The long tan strip means that the habitat ship can fly in between the roll bar of the engineering ship, and land on top of it.

Now here's where it gets cool.

Do you see the ends of those arcs? In profile, they look like ovals. The TOS impulse engines had two rectangular vents in the ovals. But there wasn't anything significant to the side of those rectangles. My ships have an impulse vent on each arc, with identical ports to either side of a vent.

If you'd like, duplicate the ships, and cut them out on paper or an image editor. Now fit the ends together. You can link quite a number of ships together; in multiple combinations. And this is even without a core ship yet. You can put together a Starfleet Unicomplex!

 

[Retroneon]

Added some more detail to the Engineering Hull.



You can see that there is no shuttlebay in the back. Underneath that curve is the large industrial replicator pad. I feel that this device should be important to problem solving. No more remodulation of deflector frequencies. The crew resolves problems diplomatically. And when the problem is engineering related, then the crew should actually build a mechanical solution. Make it educational. They could even attach new contraptions in the flat ventral area.

So the roll bar is a drydock. But it isn't very long. I thought about having ring segments stretch back. That alien drydock from Enterprise was very cool. Perhaps a similar frame can be mounted on the spine of the bed. Since it is hollow, the transport pod can still dock on the bed.

People are wondering about the purpose of the undercut on engineering sections. Well, the engine room is right behind it. I think Doug Okuda said the rear bay of the NX-01 allowed the engine room to be serviced. This is very smart because real boats are screwed when it comes to repair. Their engines are built into a hull segment. And when the segments are welded shut, the engines are entombed. It's very hard to get them back out!

There's a 24-hour limit to the date one can edit an old post. The button goes away after a while; and I wonder if there is also a limit to the number of times I can edit a post. I don't know why everything a person writes has to be set in stone. I might want to correct a typo. Or for instance, I just added two simple lines to a drawing. Instead of replacing a very similar drawing, I have to create a new post. So I might instead get in trouble for posting too much.

Here's another update.

 

[Retroneon]

Here's the Core Hull.



It's smaller compared to the other two ships. For scale, the saucer is around the same size as that of the Constitution-Class'.